One moment, one bullet snuff out a child's dreams

AMPA -- Joey Bennett dreamed the dreams of any 4-year-old boy
whose world revolved around Barney and Batman.

Deadly RampageMore coverage from the pages of the St. Petersburg Times.

He wanted to be a cowboy. He was a super hero who loved to whip
around his neighborhood on a Batman bike.

But mostly, it seems, he wanted to be loved.

After his parents divorced, they signed over custody of Joey and
his sister, Kayla, to their grandmother. Joey stood at his grandmother's
kitchen table and watched his father, Joseph Bennett, give him
up with a signature on a piece of paper.

"He turned to Joseph and said, "Daddy, I'll be good if you'll
take me home with you,' " the grandmother, Connie Bowen, recalled.

Later, following much pleading, Connie Bowen let her daughter
Bernice take Joey and Kayla.

On Tuesday morning, Joey was waiting to go for a swimming lesson
with the other man he knew as dad, Hank Earl Carr, who kept an
arsenal in the family's home. Carr's mother has said he planned
to rent a motel room to give them access to a pool. Instead, Carr
shot Joey in the head, police say, as a horrified Kayla watched.

The brother Kayla called Bubba Dude was dead at 4. Hours later,
three police officers were dead, too, and the loss of a little
boy's life was eclipsed by the enormity of the day's events.

On Friday, Joey's grandmother sought to bring some recognition
to his short life.

"He was a beautiful child. He didn't have a chance," Connie Bowen
said, as she made plans to bury her only grandson in her hometown
of Marietta, Ohio. Plans for the service were incomplete Friday.

Connie Bowen was in the hospital room when Bernice Bowen delivered
Joey by Caesarean section in 1993, and she heard her grandson's
first scream. "He was blue as a button," she said.

Despite the problems in the lives of the adults around him, the
little boy had a sunny disposition, relatives said.

On a trip to Arizona, he became attached to an uncle's black cowboy
hat, and someone bought him little cowboy boots to match.

He had a gray-and-white kitten named Joey. He had a pet dove named
Vicki. He played on his swing set in Ohio, and when he moved to
Tampa he got a Batman bike and child's size-9 Batman shoes.

"I've got brand new shoes now, Grandma, I can really make that
bike go," he said in a telephone call to his grandmother in Ohio.

Joey was good at playing his Sega video game, and he could count
to 100, recite his ABCs and print his name. He also was mischievous.

There was the day he went fishing in his grandmother's aquarium.
His aunt walked in to find the fish flopping on a table.

"I'm going fishing, Aunt Rosie," he told her.

"He was delightful," said his aunt, Rose Hayes. "We loved him.
We needed him as much as he needed us, and it's going to be hard
to exist without him."

On his last phone call to his grandmother, Joey asked her to send
him a toy gun. Plastic guns were his favorite toys, she said.

Next week, Bowen plans to bury the gun with Joey. -- Times staff writer Marty Rosen contributed to this report.